“They’ve gotten wise to us,” Larry muttered, squinting to see past the flames into the darkness. “A few years ago, there were a whole lotta them, and they’d come rushing up to the walls, searching for a way in, all night. We picked off several—damn things are hard to kill—before we got the fire idea. They still hang around—” he jerked his thumb toward the edge of the forest “—but they very rarely come close anymore. Mostly, they check to see if we have the fire going, and then they leave. Look, there they go.”
I watched the rabids melt back into the woods, disappearing into the trees. The tension left Zeke and Darren’s shoulders, and they straightened, lowering their guns, though Zeke looked disappointed.
“They’ll come back,” Larry said, not weary or resigned. Just a statement, a simple fact. “They always do.” He tapped Darren’s shoulder. “Come on, then, Darren was it? Let’s get back to our post. Sometimes the monsters creep around and come at us again from the other side, sneaky bastards.”
Darren and Larry climbed down from the platform and shuffled back to their own, Larry already pointing out more rabid “strategies,” if you could call them that. Zeke set down his rifle and leaned next to me against the railing, our shoulders barely touching as we gazed out over the fields.
“They have a nice life here,” he said, and his voice wasn’t mocking or sarcastic. It was almost wistful, envious. I snorted and crossed my arms, hiding the unease of a moment before.
“What, you mean with the wall and being penned in like sheep, and the constant threat of rabid invasion? It’s like a miniature New Covington, except there are no vampires here.”
Except one.
“They have a home,” Zeke said, giving me a sideways look. “They have a family. They’ve carved out their own lives, and yeah, it might not be completely perfect or safe, but at least they have something that belongs to them.” He sighed and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “Not like us, constantly wandering around, never knowing what we’ll find or what comes next. Not having a home to go back to.”
The longing in his voice was palpable. I felt his shoulder against mine, our arms brushing together, the heat radiating from him. We didn’t look at each other, keeping our gazes on the looming forest. “What was home for you?” I asked softly. “Before all this, before you started looking for Eden. Where did you live?”
“A little yellow house,” Zeke murmured, his voice sounding distant. “With a tire swing in the front yard.” He blinked, giving me an embarrassed look. “Ah, you don’t want to hear about it, do you? It’s pretty boring. Nothing special.”
I gave him a puzzled look. My whole life, I thought there was nothing beyond the vampire cities but wilderness and rabids. The fact that there were other settlements out there, other towns, no matter how scattered, gave me hope. Maybe the world wasn’t as empty as I’d first thought.
But I didn’t tell him that. I just shrugged and said, “Tell me about it.”
He nodded, paused a moment, as if gathering memories. “I don’t remember much,” he began, gazing out into the darkness. “There was a community down in the hollow of a mountain range. It was fairly small, everyone knew each other. We were so isolated, we didn’t even think about rabids and vampires and things happening on the outside. So when the rabids did come, no one was prepared for it. Except Jeb.”
Zeke stopped and took a quiet breath, his eyes far away and dark. “They came to our house first,” he mused. “I remember them scratching at the windows, tearing down the walls to get in. My mom or my dad hid me in a closet, and I listened to their screams through the door.” He shivered, but his voice was calm, as if this had happened to someone else, and he was detached from the boy in the story.
“The next thing I clearly remember was the door opening and Jeb standing there, staring down at me. He took me in, and we lived there for several years.”
“Is that where the rest of the group came from?”
“Mostly.” Zeke gave me a sideways glance. “There were more of us at first, and some like Darren we picked up along the way. But, yes, the majority of us came from that town. After the rabid attack, people were scared. They didn’t know what to do. So they started listening to Jeb, coming to him for help, pleading for his advice. In time, it became a weekly thing, where we met in the old church for an hour or so and listened to him talk. Jeb didn’t want to be a preacher again, he told everyone that. But people kept coming. And after a while, he sort of…gained a following.”
“But…Jeb believes God has abandoned the world, that He’s not here anymore.” I gave Zeke a confused look. “I can’t imagine that went over well.”
“You’d be surprised.” Zeke shrugged. “People were desperate for some sort of guidance, and it wasn’t as bleak as you might think. Jeb believes that, even though God is no longer watching us, we have to keep fighting the evil while we’re here. That we can’t let ourselves become tainted by the demons. That it’s the only way to have a shot at eternity when we die.”
“How cheerful.”
He smiled faintly. “He did have some rather strong opposition, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Jeb was never really attached to the town, not like me. Now that I think about it, I don’t think he ever meant to stay long. Not with what he was teaching me.”